China - Japanese held Burma - Japanese held SEA - Japanese held DEI - Japanese held NW Australia - Japanese held New Guinea - Allies hold Port Moresby, Buna, Milne Bay. All else Japanese held. Solomons - Allied held up to Shortlands...much island hopping happened here leaving Guadalcanal and Munda in Japanese hands. The garrisons os these bases has been air-evacuated and sent to New Ireland / Rabaul area Gilberts - Japanese held. Allies have a single base at Abemama which is cut off and under air-interdiction from Kwajeleine. Marshalls - Japanese held Marianas - Japanese held and strongly garrisoned (2+ Divisions on each base with heavy air support)
The strategy is, broadly, to run out the clock. To that end I am trading space for time and using that time to solidly fortify the bases that could be used to interdict the oil trade or allow for the bombing of the Home Islands. Despite having a full KB, my ability to mount an offensive amphibious assault against an American held island is basically nil at this time. I have neither the forward deployed fuel nor shipping to support such an adventure.
Current issues:
1: I need to figure out what to do about the coming Soviet entry into the war. I am debating a quick offensive strike a week or two prior to Soviet activation with the goal of cutting supply lines to Vlad.
2: Burma and SE Asia is secured with numerous divisions taken from China after that conquest...however very little forward advancement is required to bring important oil production into B-29 range and I lack the strength or logistics to invade India.
3: Empire-wide supply reserves are critically low and time is needed to rebuild stockpiles. On the plus side, Japan has a stockpile of ~23 million tons of resources in the home islands which, using light industry, is about 1.5 million tons of supply "on the hoof" as it were. This is equal to about 3 months of total empire-wide production, so this is a decent reserve for the final siege (maybe...)
4: I am currently forced to play a nearly 100% reactive war both due to a need to conserve resources (especially fuel) and because I lack the strength to make a truly decisive strike against any currently exposed Allied target. I am not a fan of yielding the strategic initiative to a stronger opponent, but I am not sure what I can do about it...
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Joined: 11/15/2002 From: Southern California Status: offline
quote:
ORIGINAL: jolly_pillager
Current strategic situation is as follows:
China - Japanese held Burma - Japanese held SEA - Japanese held DEI - Japanese held NW Australia - Japanese held New Guinea - Allies hold Port Moresby, Buna, Milne Bay. All else Japanese held. Solomons - Allied held up to Shortlands...much island hopping happened here leaving Guadalcanal and Munda in Japanese hands. The garrisons os these bases has been air-evacuated and sent to New Ireland / Rabaul area Gilberts - Japanese held. Allies have a single base at Abemama which is cut off and under air-interdiction from Kwajeleine. Marshalls - Japanese held Marianas - Japanese held and strongly garrisoned (2+ Divisions on each base with heavy air support)
If this were the strategic situation in real life 1945, MacArthur, Mountbatten, Churchill, Truman and Nimitz would be out of their jobs and Dewey would be President.
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Joined: 11/15/2002 From: Southern California Status: offline
As for the Russians, hard for me to believe that you could achieve much by activating them early..perhaps big air raids and naval bombardments a day or two early.
Shouldn't you also be getting ready for Kamikazes? Is that what all the Helens are for?
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Joined: 7/4/2003 From: Seoul, Korea Status: offline
I pop over to the other AAR about once a quarter so I don't think it would be right to comment too much. Let's just say Monty would be proud of the Allied performance.
I'm not a PBEM guy, but perhaps opening an unexpected vector like the Aleutians or Russia would open things up a bit? Otherwise it looks like a hard slog of incremental gains by the Allies until August comes around.
And Lionel is correct: You look at the front line in February 1945 and it's a clear IJ victory.
3: Empire-wide supply reserves are critically low and time is needed to rebuild stockpiles. On the plus side, Japan has a stockpile of ~23 million tons of resources in the home islands which, using light industry, is about 1.5 million tons of supply "on the hoof" as it were. This is equal to about 3 months of total empire-wide production, so this is a decent reserve for the final siege (maybe...)
I have some bad news here: you won't get any time and supply usage escalates dramatically in '45.
So, you need to curtail your supply usage and seriously start to pull in your perimeter.
You industry screen shows you are building about 30K supply a day. You need to start saving 10K/day. How to do that? 1. Stop all factory repair/building. 2. You have +7000 sorties/day. That is roughly 7000 supply/day. That's a guess as it depends greatly on the mission profile. But cut 50% of your sorties.
Once you have done this, run for 2 - 3 days. Watch your supply pool at Tokyo. It should grow ~20K/day. If you use Tracker, you can get better numbers.
Then you can slowly increase back some supply usage, but not much. Don't repair more than 10 factories at a time. Prioritize. Watch your sorties, particularly in back theatre. Pulling in your lines will shrink that area that you are protecting, decreasing the sortie count.
Good Luck!
Remember, it won't matter a bit that you own Darwin in '45 if you have no supply because the allies will be able to drive right up to Tokyo and take it as you won't be able to fly or fight.
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Joined: 6/26/2008 From: Phenix City, Alabama Status: offline
You have done a fine job to date and looks like you opponent will have to do something dramatic to snatch victory from the jaws of strategic defeat. As Pax said time to draw back and save supplies, oil and fuel. Let him come to you and punish and deep penetration ruthlessly.
do I understand correctly that in addition to the territory you still hold in '45 you still have afloat every single Japanese CV and BB except one CVE? That's extraordinary!
As for the Russians, hard for me to believe that you could achieve much by activating them early..perhaps big air raids and naval bombardments a day or two early.
Shouldn't you also be getting ready for Kamikazes? Is that what all the Helens are for?
I am building every single aircraft I can possibly build...I have plenty of HI and Kamikazes are going to devour airframes.
As far as the Russians I am wondering if activating them and cutting off Vladivostok before their units morph into huge Corps is worthwhile...when does that happen anyways?
do I understand correctly that in addition to the territory you still hold in '45 you still have afloat every single Japanese CV and BB except one CVE? That's extraordinary!
This is accurate, but we really have not had any large battles...a couple of KB strikes against amphibious forces and their escorting CVE's off of New Guinea and Rabaul is really about it so far.
Currently I am wary of committing the KB to anything serious until I have Sams fully integrated into the fleet...probably late spring / early summer. A6M5's are just not remotely competitive anymore...though I do have a lot of very good pilots (~1,000 pilots in TRACOM the vast majority of whom are IJN Fighter pilots plus about 3,000 50/70/70 in reserve plus all current air groups manned by 50/70/70 guys and all KB groups with 70+/75/75 guys). Also my training pool has 1,500 pilots at 64xp currently due to the high number of TRACOM guys getting solid training in.
Another slow day of desperate fortifying and building of aircraft.
Here are some of the lessons learned from the past 4 years:
1: Convert every single AK into a PB that you can. Early war they provide badly needed ASW escort. Mid to late war they make excellent fast transport groups for delivering supplies to forward bases. ESPECIALLY the 330 cargo ones...those can unload in a single night and escape making them golden.
2: Air ASW is needed. Spotting subs and careful routing is the key in reducing your losses. Prosecuting subs with hunter killer groups is a waste of fuel...just bomb them every so often and avoid them the rest of the time.
3: Turning off all sub production allows you to accelerate all CV's. Not sure if that was 100% worth it or not, but it was doable.
4: Hoard your fuel even if you think you have plenty. 7 days of sortie per month for your main combat force (3 days out, 3 days in, 1 day fighting) maximum.
5: Never repair refineries
6: Stop repairing Light Industry mid-1942.
7: Conquer China
8: Conquer Burma, but be wary of allowing a large ground force there get cut off by amphibious landings down the coast.
9: When dealing with night bombers take your slowest, worst rate of climb aircraft (I use Petes and Jakes), put the most cowardly individual you can find in charge and put them at 10% Night CAP at 100' altitude. Just having a CAP present reduces damage to maybe 1/4 what it would otherwise be and bombers at night will shoot down day fighters at 6:1.
10: Don't throw good money after bad...have a defense plan that commits forces to each phase of the defense and STOP FIGHTING once you have expended the allowed resources for a given phase line. Fleets in being are only a good deterrent if they A: Exist and B: The enemy is sure you are willing to use them.
11: The best target for the KB is enemy escort groups, SAG's and transports. You cannot win CV dominance by fighting his CV's so don't try...raid and hit soft targets of opportunity. His CV's cannot take your bases from you but his Marines and AP's can.
12: Mavis's and Emily's are gold. Air transport into bases with trashed airbases in order to evacuate combat troops that have been bypassed is something you should do whenever possible.
Current fighter pilot training program uses the following settings:
Type "A" groups: 30% CAP 70% Training Range 0 1000' Altitude Naval Attack This trains XP, Air, LowNav and Def...I figure LowNav is going to be useful for kamikazes.
Type "B" groups 100% Training Range 0 100' Altitude Sweep This trains Strafe and Def...I am only using this to train up the pilots that I trained early war at 100% escort and who have 70 Air skills and 30's in everything else (few hundred or so of these guys left in the Army Pilot pools).
Type "C" groups 100% Training, sometimes 30/70 CAP 5000' altitude Escort, 0 range This is for training green pilots right out of flight school...get them to 70 Air and throw them into the reserve pool for the "B" groups to pick up.